Transcribing Mahler's five Rückert Lieder plus Wagner's five Wesendonck Lieder and Prelude and "Love-Death" from Tristan und Isolde for soprano plus piano quartet raises fascinating performance possibilities. Shorn of their orchestral forces, the transcriptions make the works available for chamber-sized ensembles, and one imagines hearing all manner of polyphonic lines and harmonic details with amazing clarity.In that regard, this recording of pianist/composer Christian Favre's transcriptions of Mahler and Wagner by soprano Felicity Lott and the Quatuor Schumann does not disappoint. Start with the Tristan Prelude: though one at first misses the orchestral colors, the intensity and lucidity of the French ensemble's playing amply compensates for the loss. But the group's performance is compromised by English soprano Felicity Lott. One of the great English sopranos of the later years of the twentieth century, Lott's voice was not nearly what it had been when this recording was made in 2007. Here, Lott's tone is less luxurious and more restrained, her technique less virtuosic and more cautious, and her colors less nuanced and more brazen. Though her voice is still lovely in quieter passages, Lott seems to be straining in the climaxes. Thus, while the evanescent coda of Mahler's "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen" sounds suitably ethereal, the climaxes of his "Um Mitternacht" and Wagner's "Love-Death" seem weak, even puny. Captured in close, vivid sound by Aeon, this recording is worth hearing by anyone who already loves these works and is looking for fascinating new ways to perform them. But while they might be impressed by Favre's arrangements and the Quatuor Schumann's performances, they might also wish a different soprano had been engaged.© TiVo

Leading the Frankfurt Radio orchestra, the hr-Sinfonie Orchester, conductor Andrés Orozco-Estrada is performing and recording the great repertoire of symphonic music. His 100% Wagner programme brings together a selection of overtures and preludes. No singing: just orchestral music. Siegfried is absent here, as is the Tetralogia, along with the preludes from the third acts of Parsifal and Lohengrin. But as a whole, the record – a single disc, unlike Marek Janowski's double album for PentaTone – is well-put together.Heading the German outfit, Orozco-Estrada blazes a new path among the operas of the great Builder of Bayreuth. The programme moves through the pieces in chronological order of composition. The Flying Dutchman starts the proceedings, followed by Lohengrin and Tristan and Isolde forms a bridge to the high point that is Parsifal. Then the clock turns back, as Tannhäuser leads us on at last to Rienzi. It's a daring move to finish on this work from Wagner's youth! That said, the listener will recognise the value of this precious overture. Of course, in the middle of the score, the rolling snare drums herald the rather pompous tone of the final military march, punctuated with cymbal crashes. But that shouldn't overshadow the passages of great beauty which recall  – and come on, you've just listened to it – Tannhäuser, in particular the combination of the choral pilgrims' motif against a barrage of strings.The Flying Dutchman, the first work to break with opera in the same manner as Meyerbeer, greets us in medias res, in Wagner's dramatic laboratory, where wonderful worlds are born. Impeccable brass and agile strings, an interplay of finely-balanced volumes, structures and textures: the orchestra buffets the Dutchman, sets Lohengrin aflame, rumbles around Tannhäuser and demonstrates how these pages contain all the ingredients – thematic, dramatic, lyrical – of the drama, in embryo. We will wait faithfully for a complete Wagner with these superb musicians in the pit! © Elsa Siffert/Qobuz

Download not available

On this double album “Tristan” Igor Levit explores nocturnal themes of love and death, fear, ecstasy, loneliness & redemption in the music of Richard Wagner, Franz Liszt, Gustav Mahler and Hans Werner Henze. It includes Levit’s first concerto recording with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig under Franz Welser-Möst with the album’s central work Henze’s Tristan for piano, electronic tapes and orchestra. The five works, including Liszt’s Liebestraum No. 3 and Harmonies du soir, as well as transcriptions of Wagner’s Prelude to Tristan und Isolde and Mahler’s Adagio from Symphony No. 10, span a period of 135 years (1837 to 1973) and represent very different genres. Only one of these works was originally conceived for piano solo, but Igor Levit’s exploration of borderline experiences in our lives – death in "Life" (2018), spirituality in "Encounter" (2020) and now, with "Tristan", the link between love, death and our need for redemption – inevitably means that it is not just masterpieces for the piano that are central to his concern but, above all, compositions in which certain thematic associations find their most personal expression. Levit’s own thoughts revolve less around the themes of love and death as such than around the experience of night and of the nocturnal as a dark alternative to our conscious actions by day. "Night has so many faces. It can signal a place of refuge or the loss of control, it signifies love and death, and it is the place where we feel our deepest, most paranoid fears”, says Levit. "The Adagio from Mahler’s Tenth Symphony contains a famous outburst of pain in the form of a dissonant chord, and Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde is all about a kind of emotional nuclear meltdown. All of the piece’s essential actions take place at night. In his reminiscences, Hans Werner Henze likewise recalled his work on Tristan as a time of nightmares and of dreamlike hallucinations”. Hans Werner Henze’s Tristan – described by the composer as a set of “Preludes for piano, tape and orchestra” – is a raptly refined hybrid work comprising passages for solo piano and electronics and is a concerto, a symphony and a piece of music theatre all wrapped into one. The present recording of this work was made during the concerts that were given in Leipzig in November 2019. Liszt’s nocturne in A-flat major – his Liebestraum No. 3 – derives from a setting of melancholic lines by Ferdinand Freiligrath: "Oh, love as long as you can love! / Oh, love as long as you could crave! / That hour is fast approaching when / You’ll stand and weep beside the grave!" The same sense of nocturnal despair is also found with Mahler, who in late July 1910 was working on the opening movement of his Tenth Symphony when he discovered that his wife was having an affair. Igor Levit performs this Adagio in a little-known piano transcription by the Scottish composer Ronald Stevenson, whose great Passacaglia on DSCH he has done so much recently to promote. Only in Harmonies du soir, the eleventh of Liszt’s twelve Études d’exécution transcendante, is there any sense of reconciliation, a peaceful counterweight to the ecstasies and nightmares experienced by those Wagnerian and Mahlerian figures who in Wagner’s own words are “devoted to the night”. © Sony Classical

The approach of the Bruckner bicentennial in 2024 has brought a host of performances of his symphonies. No doubt more are on the way, but several that have already appeared have brought his music into sharper definition. Among them is the live cycle by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, under the energetic direction of Andris Nelsons, which concludes with the present release. This volume exemplifies several strong characteristics of the whole cycle. Like others in the cycle, it includes a pair of Wagner instrumental pieces (here at the beginning), the Prelude and the "Liebestod" from Tristan und Isolde; this device has worked well throughout and is especially effective here as the Wagner pieces are followed by Bruckner's Symphony No. 1 in C minor, emphasizing the role of Wagner in defining Bruckner's vast musical spaces. Nelsons has gotten wonderful string sound from the venerable Gewandhaus Orchestra, and both of the symphonies here provide impressive examples; try the first movement of the Symphony No. 1 for the strings' rather eerie perfection in the top register, and the slow movement of the Symphony No. 5 in B flat major, for sheer melodic lyricism. Perhaps beauty in the strings is built into the performances of this great orchestra, but not so the enthusiastic forward momentum of Nelsons' readings, which are of the sort that will attract non-Brucknerites. The performances here make a nice contrast with those of Christian Thielemann and the Staatskapelle Dresden or Vienna Philharmonic; Thielemann is the great technician, while Nelsons thinks in terms of long lines. Deutsche Grammophon captures the immediacy of the live performances in this superb release.© TiVo

Anne Schwanewilms is one of Germany's leading Wagnerian sopranos, and this 2014 Capriccio album showcases her lyrical voice in three well-known works: Elisabeth's aria, "Dich, teure Halle" from Tannhäuser, the five Wesendonck Lieder, and the Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde. These are key examples of Wagner's vocal writing, emphasizing the long, through-composed line and the soaring lyricism of his most memorable music. Schwanewilms' light, evenly supported tone, controlled phrasing, and clear diction combine in wonderfully expressive singing that compels listening, even though she doesn't possess a loud or especially commanding voice. One may wish for a little more volume or power, but these pieces really don't require a dramatic soprano voice to be effective. The Overture and Bacchanal from Tannhäuser and the Prelude from Tristan und Isolde are played by the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Cornelius Meister, and they are appropriate choices, though to make this a proper vehicle for Schwanewilms' talents, those familiar pieces should have been replaced with either more Wagnerian arias or selections from her performances in the operas of Richard Strauss. However, Wagner lovers will be just as happy to have this album as it is, without any substitutions.© TiVo